Leadership (Abuja)
Emmanuel Iffer
27 June 2008
The Indonesian authority yesterday were to execute two Nigerians, who have been convicted of smuggling illegal drugs into the country.
According to a report from the Associated Press, in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, which quoted the country's officials, the execution was meant to mark the United Nations' anti-drugs day.
The report gave the names of the condemned Nigerians as Samuel Okoye, 37, and Hansen Nwaolisa, 40, and said they were arrested at Jakarta's international airport in 2001, each carrying more than 6.5 pounds (three kilogrammes) of heroin.
It also said that the duo have been held at a high-security prison on Nusakambangan island since their conviction.
"They will be executed tonight," Attorney General Hendarman Supandji told reporters yesterday.
He refused further comment, but the country's anti-narcotics agency said their deaths before a firing squad would mark the international anti-drugs day.
Television footage showed the wives and children of the convicts being escorted to the island, along with ambulances carrying two coffins.
Drug traffickers are routinely sentenced to death in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim and socially conservative nation of 235 million people, and foreigners have not been exempt.
About 140 people are currently on death row, mostly for drug-related crimes.
Not too long ago, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, had to plead with the Indonesian ambassador to Nigeria to commute to life imprisonment the death sentences passed on the Nigerians, but all the plea appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
Similarly, at a media briefing in his office, the minister told foreign affairs correspondents that there were more than 50 Nigerians on the death row over drug-related offences in Indonesia.
Worried by this development, the Ministry of Foreign is already preparing to host an international conference aimed at educating and sensitising Nigerians on the danger associated with illegal migration, as well as behaviours that are capable of giving Nigeria negative image abroad.
At the time of this report, Leadership could not get any official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or that of the Indonesian Embassy in Abuja to comment on the matter.
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It is sad that Idonesia would go this way to execute Nigerians for an offence that could attract jail term. The Nigerian govt should register its protest to the Indonesian govt and if satisfactory response is not received, should end all ties with the country
Be that as it may, the crime committed by those Nigerians was not an act of war. For better international relation the government of Indonesia should after convicting those Nigeria return them to Nigeria. The Nigeria government would then sentence those convicts according to Nigeria laws. For Indonesia to execute Nigerian nationals is cause to tactfully withdraw economic and cultural engagement with the people and government of Indonesia.
Nigerians should desist from traveling to that restricted Muslim nation for whatever reason. Because Nigerians are quiet over the matter does not necessarily mean that we are happy about the killing of our citizens.
Could it be that the Nigeria Fed. Ministry of External Affairs did not do enough to win release of those Nigerians because they were drug traffickers? No matter what they were Nigerians and we love them. If they were American or British Nationals, Indonesia would have found a good reason to rescind the death penalty. This raises question about Nationalism and Government responsibilities to Nigerians.